


How You Build the Fire

by what_alchemy



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6394972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy's always there, after Elektra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How You Build the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> If the Daredevil writers can mess with the timeline and Joss their own canon conversations, so can I.
> 
> To that end:
> 
> 1\. I'm operating, as always, under the assumption that Matt and Foggy met in undergrad.
> 
> 2\. Matt met Elektra senior year, and Foggy wouldn't meet Marci until law school.
> 
> 3\. The "what happened with that hot Greek girl" exchange from 1.10 never happened, because Foggy knows damn well what happened with that hot Greek girl.
> 
> 4\. I'm headcanoning Elektra as having the same ethnic and national heritage as Elodie Yung, that is, French and Cambodian, but as having been adopted by a Greek diplomat.
> 
> 5\. This is possibly darker than the tags might lead you to believe, but you know I'm a sucker for happy endings.

The first time a lump o’ Matt waved him off for their 10am from underneath the covers, Foggy thought nothing of it and went to Politics of Income Inequality on his own. Matt had come back to the dorm late the night before, but he _had_ come back—a rare occurrence since the crash landing of one Hot Greek Girl (TM) in his life. Half Greek? All hot. All scary. But Foggy figured Mr. 4.0 was entitled to a little lie-in every once in a while, and he let him be. 

It was when Foggy came back six hours hours later having been to class, lunch, and another class, and Matt was still a misshapen curl under his comforter that Foggy felt the first stirrings of unease.

“Matt?” he whispered, and stretched a finger toward the peak of blanket mountain to poke at whatever lay underneath. “Buddy?”

Matt grunted.

“You all right?” Foggy said. 

“M’fine,” Matt said, voice like gravel.

“Are you sick?” Foggy said. “Do you want some soup from the dining hall?”

“I just need sleep, bud,” Matt said. “But thanks.”

Foggy brought him soup anyway. It got cold on Matt’s desk while he slept, and slept, and slept some more.

—

Foggy kept bringing Matt meals even though they were coming out of his own plan and mostly going to waste. Matt continued to live in a one-man twin XL blanket fort. He even started to smell a bit.

“Hey Matt?” Foggy said.

Foggy waited for a grunt to rumble out from beneath the bedding. The same grunt that had been passing for Matt’s half of the conversation for the past week and a half. He had a whole speech planned. It was about how much he admired Matt, and how amazing he thought he was, and how even amazing people don’t have to be strong all the time, and sometimes other people can be strong for them, and sometimes asking for help was the strongest thing they could do. He was going to fortify his argument with supporting evidence from Professor Ogadu, who had laid brochures for the counseling office on top of Foggy’s notebook earlier that day, and Amitabha from Queens, who missed her Law of War study buddy.

But Matt didn’t grunt. He _whimpered_.

Foggy’s speech evaporated as he sat heavily on the edge of Matt’s bed. He set a hand where he guessed Matt’s shoulders might be.

“Hey,” Foggy said again, keeping his voice low and soothing. “It’s just me and you, Matty. Tell me what you need and I’ll get it, do it, whatever. What’s up, bud? How can I help?”

“I’m fine,” Matt said. The words sounded like they’d been rent from a cheese grater. 

“Okay, you’re really not, but we can pretend if you want,” Foggy said. He rubbed his hand over the blanket and hoped it was Matt’s back or arm or something not too weird, and that it was soothing in the way he intended. “So, in this fantasy world we’re living in, let’s do some stuff, all right?”

“Mmph.”

“Yeah, definitely, showers are awesome, what a great idea. You know what else rocks? Food. Let’s splurge a little, go to that Ethiopian place you like, what do you say?”

“Splurge with what money, Fog?” Thick and scratchy, but a bit peevish, too. That was good. A sign of life.

“My staggering student loan debt isn’t going to be put over the edge by $50 for good food, Matty,” Foggy said. He patted something bony and sent a little wish up to the universe that he’d gotten a shoulder and not a chiseled jaw. “But first! Basic hygiene! Up and at ’em, slugger. Your loofah has missed you. You don’t call, you don’t write.”

Mount Murdock shifted beside him until a dark messy head popped out from the blankets and wide, bloodshot eyes blinked and roved in Foggy’s general direction. There were pillow marks all over his face, even through the failure to shave for however long. Foggy’s heart squeezed.

“I’m sorry I smell,” Matt said, and his lower lip trembled.

“Hey man,” Foggy said, lungs threatening the sympathy quakes, “don’t start, because then I’ll start, and I’ll hug you, and you won’t let go, and we’ll be two gross soggy dudes who need a shower instead of just one.”

A laugh clapped out of Matt like a little jack-in-the-box, and Foggy smiled down at him even though it hurt.

“Come on,” Foggy said. “Seriously, dinner’s on me, but you know I’m way too fancy to be seen in public with a human-sized piece of dryer lint.”

“I’m getting up,” Matt grumbled, and didn’t get up. Foggy held his breath and only hesitated a little when he reached over to brush some sweaty hair off Matt’s forehead. Hazel eyes fluttered shut as Matt leaned into the touch, and Foggy forced himself not to snatch his hand away. 

“We’re gonna get through this,” Foggy said, soft. Matt made a little sound, and Foggy slid his hand down Matt’s neck to clasp a shoulder for reals this time. “Hey. I promise. Does Foggy Nelson keep his promises?” Matt nodded, looking miserable. Foggy forced another smile out. “All right,” he said. “Cleanliness, then gluttony. Virtue and sin all in one night, that’s how I roll.”

Matt sent him a tremulous little smile.

“Thanks, Foggy,” he said.

—

Haltingly over injera and wat, Matt told Foggy that he and Elektra had broken up. He vagued up the details, which made Foggy think The Incident was sex-related and he vowed never, ever to think of Matt and Elektra having sex more than he already had, but apparently she’d done a runner in the aftermath and now Matt was this starving shadow orphan boy cultivating an accidental beard in the funk of his sheets.

Foggy had known Matt for four years, had been practically living out of his pockets since the first day of freshman orientation, and he’d never seen him get so shattered over someone before. Matt had his admirers—a guy doesn’t walk around looking like that without them, even accounting for people who would be scared off by the blind thing—but for his own part he seemed unflappable. He’d see a girl—always a girl—a few times, maybe sleep with her and give Foggy the demure smile but waggling eyebrows routine, and then his nose would be back in a book and it would be like the whole thing never happened. Matt’s heart, Foggy had once believed, was an immovable object. Now, as he considered the ghost of Matt Murdock inert before a fantastic meal he could barely pick at, Foggy thought finding out differently had cost too much.

“You know what my job is, don’t you?” Foggy said. “As the loyal Goose to your Maverick?”

“I still don’t think that’s who we are?”

“It’s to say: fuck her, dude.” Foggy flicked both his wrists out in front of him as if the specter of Elektra Natchios were trash to be cleared. “She doesn’t know what she’s missing. She’s an idiot to let you get away. You’re better off without her. Etcetera, etcetera.”

Foggy’s heart sank as Matt tucked his chin into his chest, mouth twisted up in a mournful arch. 

“Hey, sorry,” Foggy said. He aborted an instinctive shoulder reach when he realized his hands were covered in meaty deliciousness. He wiped them on his napkin. “I’m not good at the whole…comforting my bestie after a break up thing. Clearly. If you want to vent and call her names, or regale me with timeless poetry about how awesome she is, I’m up for any of it. All of it. I’m 100% ears right now, bud, you just lay it on me, whatever it is.”

Matt rearranged his napkin in his lap as Foggy clamped his mouth shut to stop the babbling. After a long moment, Matt tipped his face up in that way he had, where Foggy was half-convinced he could see right through him. Foggy’s heart stumbled.

“She was a dream,” Matt said, and Foggy felt a lump grow in his throat. “She made me more wholly myself, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have that again.” He faced his plate again, dipped some injera in some wat, and with a mouthful of food he asked Foggy if he had his eye on anyone.

Foggy, gazed fixed on a bit of stew clinging stubbornly to the corner of Matt’s mouth, shook his head.

—

Matt shifted from sleeping always to sleeping never. He still wasn’t going to class. He just…sat there. Not-staring at the wall. Resting his fingertips on his braille display without actually reading. Growing circles under his eyes almost as successfully as the beard on his jaw. Foggy started to worry he’d be a senior-year flunk-out and their matching Columbia Law School acceptances would be moot. Foggy started to explore medical deferments with the registrar and spent his dwindling free time worrying about how he was going to bring it up to the king of Catholic repression.

Then, he woke up in the middle of the night to sniffling from the other side of the room. 

“Matt?” he whispered. “Matty?”

The little choked off sobs stopped abruptly and Foggy heard the bedding rustle.

“Sorry, Fog,” Matt said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Hey man,” Foggy said. “It’s like 3 am. I’m not looking at you. You can…stop pretending everything’s okay, just this once. I won’t tell anyone.”

Foggy could hear the ragged edges of Matt’s breath. They sat in the dark for a long time, silent but for the damp, shaky sound of Matt trying not to bother anyone else with his pain.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said after a long time. 

Foggy had never had a really bad break up. He supposed he’d never been with anyone in a serious way. There was always Matt, and Foggy’s Big Bi Unrequited Feelings. Foggy Nelson, gold medalist in Olympic Pining. Not that he blamed Matt for any of that. It was what it was. Foggy was fine. 

He thought about Matt telling him he didn’t like him, they weren’t buds anymore, and he was moving away forever. If Foggy had been standing, he’d have fallen on the floor like a consumptive Victorian girl running in a corset. He swallowed against the flip-flop of his heart. 

“You know what we haven’t done in a while?” he said.

“Hm.”

“Really hugged it out.” They used to hug all the time. Hug, touch, sling limbs over other limbs like there was no question about their welcome. Casually just up in each other’s business, ever since freshman year.

And then Elektra happened.

“What do you say, bud?” Foggy said. “Just so happens I recently opened a box of patented Foggy Nelson hugs, no time limit or expiration date. Your name all over it.”

“You opened my mail?”

Foggy barked out a laugh.

“Yeah, dude, sorry about that.” He rolled off his bed and padded over to Matt’s. He sat on the edge of the mattress as Matt shuffled to a sitting position. In the blue-grey darkness, Foggy could see Matt blinking puffy eyes at him. Foggy wanted to smooth down his hair, but he shifted to face him more fully instead. He reached his arms out. Matt’s shoulders rolled inward as if to make himself smaller, but he scooted over enough for Foggy to encircle his waist. Matt’s arms closed around him gingerly, but after a moment he sagged into the embrace like a noodle in boiling water. Foggy let his breath out and set his nose in Matt’s hair and let himself have this one small thing. 

In the morning, Foggy found himself shoved to one side, ass against the wall, with a sleeping, drooling Matt Murdock tangled all around him.

—

Foggy woke with a gasp.

He sat up in bed, heart threatening to fly out of his face holes, and cast the covers away for being hot. Against his window was a damning silhouette. _Inside_.

“Fuck,” he said. “ _Fuck_ , Matt, what are you doing here? What the fuck time is it?”

Matt didn’t say anything, but he took that stupid helmet off and tossed it onto a chair. Foggy could just barely make out his profile against the ambient light filtering through his curtains, but it was as chiseled and scruffy and perfect as ever, damn him. Less bloody and scraped up than he was used to these days, but what did Foggy know? He hadn’t seen him in almost six months. His traitorous heart constricted. 

“I know I have no right,” Matt said, voice nothing more than a rumble up Foggy’s spine. He shuddered.

“No! You don’t! What the fuck, Matt!”

“…but I’m asking, just this once.” Matt swallowed convulsively. “After this I’ll never bother you again, Foggy, I swear. I swear.”

“Spit it out then, dude, seriously.”

“Could you…could you open up your box of hugs again? I really—“ His voice broke. “—I really need it tonight, Foggy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Foggy stared at him.

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve, Murdock.”

“I know,” he said. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Foggy clenched his jaw and scrubbed at his eyes. He pushed his covers aside and rocked himself over to one side.

“Get out of that thing,” he said. “I can tell it’s bad for hugs all the way over here.” 

Hastily, Matt started to strip, and Foggy looked away. 

“You better have underwear on,” he said, for his own sanity.

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Otherwise there’s chafing.”

“Jesus,” Foggy said. “Don’t tell me how you found that out.”

Matt shucked off the outfit and stood at the foot of Foggy’s bed in nothing but boxer briefs, and Foggy couldn’t even appreciate the fantasy come to life because Matt’s breath was hitching and something deeper than Foggy’s heartbreak rose up inside him and made him say, “C’mere, Matt.”

Matt knelt on the bed, stiff, unsure of his welcome, but Foggy scoffed and yanked him into his arms. He tumbled boneless into the hug and after a moment Foggy felt his arms come up around Foggy’s back, his breath hot and uneven against his collarbone. Foggy rubbed his palms firmly, slowly, up and down his back, and he became aware that they were rocking side to side as Matt leaked silent tears into Foggy’s t-shirt. 

“Shit, Matty,” Foggy said. “What happened?”

“Elektra,” Matt said, and Foggy’s stomach hollowed out. 

_What did she do this time?_ Foggy didn’t say. _You said you weren’t gonna mess with her anymore. When are you gonna learn this pain is all she’s got for you? When are you gonna stop mistaking excitement for love?_ But Foggy was tired. He was tired of the fight, tired of the words, tired of hearing himself tell Matt over and over again that he was fucking up his life. Maybe, along with the mantle of “best friend,” he’d lost the right to play the concerned citizen as surely as Matt had lost the right to show up unannounced. He closed his eyes.

“Tell me,” is all he said.

Over the course of an hour, Matt mumbled the story into Foggy’s shoulder. Some cult called the Hand had claimed Elektra as their Lord and Savior or something, but then she’d sacrificed herself to save Matt in a big blow-out fight. He’d buried her, mourned her, fought on in her name, but the Hand had apparently found the secret to resurrection, don’t tell that to your priest friends, only it was less everlasting life after death and more “soldier in an army of the undead.” And this was how Matt found himself face to face with Elektra again tonight—Elektra transformed. 

“She was—empty,” Matt said. 

“Jesus Christ,” Foggy said. 

“Her voice wasn’t the same without her heartbeat underneath, echoing around her body,” Matt said. “The words were right, but the timbre was all wrong. And she was—cool. Room temperature. I couldn’t _feel_ her. _God_.” 

“Did she—” _bite you, usher in the zombie apocalypse, turn you into a husk of yourself_ “—try to hurt you?” 

“No, no, she was…sad. She stopped fighting me. She tried to touch my face.”

“Tried?”

“I couldn’t help it,” Matt said. “I ducked away from her. I hurt her.”

“Matt, that’s not your fault.”

Matt drew a soggy breath and a humorless laugh puffed its way across the skin of Foggy’s neck.

“I killed her, Fog,” he said. “She asked me to and I did it, and that will always be my fault.”

“ _What?_ ”

Matt pulled away and wiped at his face. He sat back in the nest of Foggy’s sheets, knees still pressed against Foggy’s. His eyes were big in the swallowing dark, trained on something beyond the waking world.

“She told me the Hand had a plan for her,” he said, “and she wasn’t going to be able to stop them from using her to enact it. She was losing her will more and more every day, and soon she would be nothing but a weapon in their war. So she told me she had one last request of me, one last comfort in the world of the living. She called it—she called it a kindness.”

“God, Matt.”

“So I did it,” Matt said, and gasped. “I ended her suffering. I ended a war. The Hand scattered. But I—” He thumped too hard at his own chest, face twisting as he left scratch marks on his own skin. “I held her. I held her.”

Foggy pulled Matt back into his arms and locked his arms tight around him. Matt shuddered into him, but Foggy only squeezed him harder.

—

After the Hand, after Elektra, the fire went out of Daredevil’s fight. He made the headlines less often until he disappeared from the news altogether. More and more nights, Foggy found himself with company in his apartment—Matt Murdock, cracking jokes, quoting Thurgood Marshall, helping Foggy research his latest case with a methodical thoroughness Foggy hadn’t seen in him since law school. It was easy to slip into the warm cotton of their old friendship. Matt still went out in his fetish gear, but he didn’t seem to be exorcising his demons anymore. He didn’t seem hellbent on destroying himself and calling it something the city needed. Sometimes, they even hugged.

Foggy tried not to hope.

On the anniversary of Elektra’s death, Matt asked Foggy to come to her grave with him. He brought orchids. The two of them stood at her headstone without speaking.

“I know you hated her,” Matt said suddenly.

“Matt—”

“You don’t have to pretend,” Matt said. He jerked his head in a nod. “You were justified. After everything I put you through in college, and…I get it.”

“You loved her,” Foggy said. “I get that.”

Matt turned his head away as if to look into some unseeable middle distance. 

“I think about love a lot,” he said. 

Foggy tucked his chin down. The orchids were a delicate white, tapering into pink.

“Oh?” he said.

“I used to think love was the fire,” Matt said. 

“But now?”

“I think it’s how you build the fire.”

Foggy looked up, and Matt was facing him. 

“I hope you’ve found a way to forgive me for how I behaved,” Matt said. “I hope I haven’t destroyed everything you used to feel for me.”

Foggy closed his eyes. It was too much to hope his heart wasn’t giving him away, but at least he wouldn’t have to look at Matt while it happened.

“I tried not to love you once, Murdock,” he said. “It didn’t stick.”

Matt took one step toward him, and then another. He was close enough that Foggy could smell that soap he used, some fancy sensitive skin formula he had to get at a particular Korean grocer. Foggy felt his chest swell with the familiarity of it. Matt licked his lips. He was about half an inch shorter than Foggy, but somehow Foggy felt as if he were looking up at him. Always had.

Up or down, what did it matter? The two of them met in the middle. 

 

**End**


End file.
